00 oo S 00 o OTTOMAN -TURKISH LANGUAGE J. W. REDHOUSE - v_S3w~ ' AJ r TRUBNER'S COLLECTION or SIMPLIFIED GRAMMARS OF THE PRINCIPAL ASIATIC AND EUROPEAN LANGUAGES. EDITED BT RELNHOLD ROST, LL.D., PH.D. IX. OTTOMAN TUKKISH. BY J. W. REDHOUSE. TRUBNER'S COLLECTION OF SIMPLIFIED GRAMMARS OF THE PRINCIPAL ASIATIC AND EUROPEAN LANGUAGES. EDITED BY REINHOLD ROST, LL.D., Pn.D. V. HINDUSTANI, PERSIAN, MODERN GREEK. AND ARABIC. BY E. M. GELDAET, M.A. Price 2s. Qd. BY THE LATE E. H. PALMER, M.A. VI. Price 5s. ROUMANIAN. BY R. TOECEANTJ. II. Price 5s. HUNGARIAN. VII. BY I. SlNGEE. TIBETAN. Price 4s. 6d. BY H. A. JASCHKE. Price 5s. III. BASQUE. VIII. BY W. VAN EYS. DANISH. BY E. C. OTTE. Price 3s. 6d. Price 3s. 6d. IV. IX. MALAGASY. OTTOMAN TURKISH. BY G. W. PABKEE. BY J. W. REDHOUSE. Price 5s. Price 10s. 6d. Grammars of the following are in preparation : Albanese, Anglo-Saxon, Assyrian, Bohemian, Bulgarian, Burmese, Chinese, Cymric and Gaelic, Dutch, Egyptian, Finnish, Hebrew, Kurdish, Malay, Pali, Polish, Russian, Sanskrit, Serbian, Siamese, Singhalese, Swedish, &c., &c., &c. LONDON: TRUBNER & CO., LUDGATE HILL. A SIMPLIFIED GRAMMAR OP THE OTTOMAN-TUEKISH LANGUAGE. BY J. W. REDHOUSE, M.K.A.S., HON. MBMBEB OB THB BOYAL BOCIBTT OP LITEBATUBE LONDON : TRUBNEK & CO., LUDGATE PULL. 1884. [All rights reserved.] SEEN BY PREi 2 DATE JAN LONDON : GILBEET AND EIVINOTON, LIMITED, BT. JOHN'S SQUARE, CLEEKENWELL EOAD. TABLE OF CONTENTS. Preface . ix Note on Identity of Alphabets xii CHAPTER I. LETTERS AND ORTHOGRAPHY. SECTION I. Number, Order, Forms, and Names of Letters ...... 1 Synopsis of Arabic, Greek, and Latin Letters 4 II. Phonetic Values of Letters, Vowel-Points, Orthographic Signs, Transliteration, Ottoman Euphony . 15 CHAPTER II. OTTOMAN ACCIDENCE. SECTION I. Nouns Substantive 51 II. Nouns Adjective . 68 III. Numerals ...... 74 IV. Pronouns 82 vi TABLE OF CONTENTS. PAGE SECTION V. Demonstratives VI. Interrogatives . Relative Pronouns . .90 ,, VII. VIII. Derivation of Verbs ... 92 (Table) . 94 of Verbs Moods Tenses IX. Conjugation ; ; ; Verbal Nouns Gerunds . 99 Participles ; ; X. Numbers and Persons . 115 XI. Complex Categories of Verbs . .119 120 XII. First Complex Category . XIII. Second . 125 XIV. Third 129 XV. Combined (Turkish) Conjugation . 133 XVI. Negative and Impotential Conjugations . 135 XVII. Dubitative, Potential, and Facile Verbs . 141 XVIII. Verb Substantive 144 XIX. Verbs of Presence and Absence, Existence and Non-Existence .... 147 XX. Compound Verbs 148 Verbs . 151 ,, XXI. Interrogative ; Interrogation XXII. Adverbial Expressions . 154 XXIII. Prepositions .... .150 . 156 XXIV. Conjunctions XXV. Interjections .... .157 TABLE OF CONTENTS. VU CHAPTER III. THE OTTOMAN SYNTAX. PAGE SECTION I. Conversational brevity. Precision in ERRATA. PAGE PREFACE. THE Ottoman is the most Language, A*.jjLJl2-c osmanlija, highly polished branch of the great Turkish tongue, which is spoken, with dialectic variations, across the whole breadth, nearly, of the middle region of the continent of Asia, impinging into Europe, even, in the Ottoman provinces, and also, in Southern Russia, up to the frontiers of the old kingdom of Poland. The in its Ottoman language is, grammar and vocabulary, fundamentally Turkish. It has, however, adopted, and con- tinues more and more to adopt, as required, a vast number of Arabic, Persian, and foreign words (Greek, Armenian, Slavonic, Hungarian, Italian, French, English, &c.), together with the use of a few of the grammatical rules of the Arabic and Persian, which are given as Turkish rules in the following pages, their origin being in each case specified. x J c The great Turkish language, AS J turkje, Ottoman and non- Ottoman, has been classed, by European writers as one of the " " not its but agglutinative languages ; inflecting words, X PREFACE. " " glueing on," as it were, particles, which were once in- dependent words," to the root- words, and thus forming all the grammatical and derivative desinences in use. To my mind, this term "agglutinative" and its definition, are inapplicable to the Turkish language in general, and to the Ottoman Turkish in particular. These are, essentially and most inflexional none of their inflexions truly, tongues ; " ever having been independent words," but modifying par- ticles only. The distinctive character of all the Turkish languages, or dialects, is that the root of a whole family, however numerous, of inflexions and derivations, is always recognizable at sight, seldom suffering any modification whatever, and always stand- ing at the head of the inflexions or derivations, however complex in character these may be. When a modification of a root-word does take place, it is always of the simplest kind, always the softening of a hard or sharp consonant into the corresponding more liquid letter, and always of the final consonant only of the root. Thus, a c^ or L> sometimes becomes a a becomes a a Arabic e) becomes a i, jj c, sharp soft Persian t*J, or the Ottoman modification of this latter, which is then pronounced like our most useful consonant y, or, in case of a dominant o or u vowel in the root, is pro- nounced like our consonant w. PREFACE. XI The Ottoman Turkish has more vowel-sounds (eleven in me. As each of number) than any other tongue known to make these may have a short and a long modification, they in all. one of these is twenty-two possible vowels Every mark in the transliterations of the distinguished by a special to such present treatise, though it is impossible attempt any the differentiation in the Arabic characters to which Ottoman language is wedded. of The rules of euphony regulate the pronunciation every in all of Turkish word in the Ottoman language ; perfectly, is in what is radically origin; and as far as practicable, foreign. unknown to Although a compound word is a thing totally in the Turkish dialects, and of very rare occurrence Arabic, from the the Ottoman language abounds with such, adopted Aryan, compounding Persian. first learnt how to mould Persian grammarians and writers into a harmonious whole the incongruous Aryan Persian and a Semitic Arabic elements. Ottoman ingenuity has gone in one noble the three step further, and blended speech the Semitic and Turanian conflicting elements of Aryan, classes of vocables. of idioms Fault is found by some with this intermixture ; xii PREFACE. but an Englishman, of all the will world, know how to appre- ciate a clever mosaic of diction ; and a real student of the language will learn to admire a true many beauty, resulting from a of masterly handling the materials at his command, by any first-rate Ottoman literary celebrity, whether prose- writer or poet NOTE. The manuscript of the sketch present Grammar was completed before Christmas, and of table 1882, copies my of identic alphabets have been in the hands of a few friends for the last four or five years. I have just had the and pleasure privilege of reading the admirable and exhaustive " treatise on The Alphabet," the Rev. Isaac by Taylor, and am rejoiced to find that he has come to the same conclusion as to the identity of the three ; probably at an earlier date than the time, perhaps twenty years ago, when the idea to force itself began on my mind. I still feel inclined' however, to hold by the inference that the Phenicians gave the alphabet to Italy, quite independently of the Greek action which later on doubtlessly influenced the Italian culture. LONDON, September, 1883. J.W.R. OTTOMAN TURKISH GEAMMAE. CHAPTER I. THE LETTERS AND ORTHOGRAPHY. SECTION I. The Number, Order, Foi*ms, and Names of the Letters. THERE are thirty-one distinct letters used in the Ottoman of these have more than one value and language. Some ; four of them are sometimes consonants, sometimes vowels. There is also a combination of two letters into one character, ^ or V, la, which Arabian piety has agreed to count as a letter, and which Persian and Turkish conformity has had no option but to adopt. Thirty-two letters have, therefore, to be named and enumerated, as follows : I o & ellf, v be, v pe, te, se, ^ jlm, ^ chlm, c ha, ^khi, ^ dal, i zel, j ri, j ze, j zhe, ^ sin, ^i shin, ^ s&d, ^ dad, L k c c _i tl, zi, 'ayn, gayn, fe, j qaf, d kaf, J lam, ., mlm, ^ nAn, j w6v, 5 he, V lam-ellf, <j ye. The foregoing is the ordinary arrangement of the letters of the as learnt and children Ottoman alphabet, repeated by ; 2 OTTOMAN TURKISH GRAMMAR. excepting that they are not at first taught to mention, or to either know, of the three Persian letters, uj pe, - chlm, and j zhe, which are not contained in the Arabic alphabet, their sounds and values being unknown to, and unpronounceable an Arab. It is called the <u c_aS1 the by, ellf-be, , i.e., alphabet; and it might be conveniently styled the alphabet by forms; letters of the same form being brought together in it, more or less. There is another very different order necessary to be learnt of the twenty-nine Arabic letters. It is called ebjed, jg\, and is arranged in eight conventional words, as follows : jjgl ebjed, j^a hevwaz, jit huttl, Jj& keleman, ^^ sa'fas, <o-^S qarashat, j sakhaz, }liki dazagila. The letters of the Arabic alphabet, as arranged in this ebjed series, have each a numerical value. The first nine in order the nine 1 to 9 the second nine stand represent units, ; for the tens, also in order, 10 to 90 ; the third nine count as the 100 to the in the hundreds, serially, 900 ; twenty-eighth c stands for the series, , 1000; and last, V, though always enumerated, has no value of its own, but counts as the sum its 1 i.